LSCOM 14: Explicitness and Implicitness in Communication

Explicitness and Implicitness in Communication: A Case Study of Communication in Akan Informal Market Setting

Emmanuel Amo Ofori

University of Cape Coast

Communication is achieved by encoding and decoding messages and this makes communication possible and effective. The speaker encodes a message, which is transmitted through a channel and the interlocutor decodes it at his end. An effective communication is one that seeks to ensure that there is mutual understanding between the people involved in that communicative act. If for some reasons, one party fails to understand the intended interpretation of an utterance, then that results in a miscommunication, and as a result the intended meaning of such an utterance will not be achieved. This really influenced my desire to carry out research into the communicative behaviours of interactants at the Akan informal market setting, observing whether their intentions are conveyed explicitly (by means of encoded logical forms to be enriched appropriately by the addressee in a mutually accessible context and the extent to which the interactants rely on implicitness (implicature) in their communication. Any other communication that goes on in the Akan informal market is analysed in this study, in order to present an objective picture of what pertains in the Akan informal market setting.

Emmanuel Amo Ofori (Ph.D.) is a lecturer in linguist in the Department of Ghanaian Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana. He obtained his Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA. in 2015. Ofori holds an MPhil in linguistics from Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway and a bachelor’s degree in Linguistics and Psychology from University of Ghana, Legon, Ghana in 2008 and 2005 respectively. His areas of research are Critical Discourse Analysis (Politics of Insults in Ghana), pragmatics, syntax and morphology of Akan.